1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a food apparatus. More particularly, the present invention relates to an adjustable liner for immersion in the cooking oil of any one of a multitude of different width, deep fryers to allow for the removal of the cooking sediment that would otherwise accumulate in the bottom of such fryers.
2. Description of the Related Art
The invention is particularly applicable to deep fryers and their fryer baskets and will be described with particular reference thereto. However, it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the invention has broader applications and may also be adapted for use as a deep fryer trap, deep fryer filter, and the like.
Restaurants that serve fried food use a great deal of cooking oil. When food particles are not filtered and make their way into the oil, they cause the oil to break down more quickly. This affects the taste of the fried food and greatly shortens the useable lifespan of the cooking oil.
Typically fryer baskets are constructed of thick wire with wide gapes formed between the wires. This arrangement allows food particles to remain in the deep fryer through many fry cycles, thus reducing the quality and useable lifespan of the oil. By removing the food particles more frequently, preferably every shift, the oil is maintained at a higher quality for a longer period of time.
Efforts to maintain cooking oil quality for longer periods of time have yielded less than ideal solutions. See, for example, U.S. Patent Publications 2009/0288564 and 2011/0288319 and U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,176,175, 6,591,741, 6,732,636, 7,383,963 and 7,775,156.
Many potential solutions to the above-identified problem focus on filtering the oil after the fryer is done being used—this requires the entire fryer being drained and filtered. This method is time consuming, not energy efficient, and by consequence expensive. Many potential solutions simply focus on speeding up this method by constructing built in filters for fryers or suction filters that more quickly filter the oil.
Other potential solutions focus on inserting metal mesh liners into traditional fryer baskets. While this solves some of the short comings of the previously mentioned solutions, it also creates several new problems. Among the problems is that the fry liners can fall out of the traditional basket if not properly secured. Also, food particles can become lodged between the mesh and the wire basket, thus diminishing the effectiveness of the liners.
The usefulness of such prior liners has also been negatively impacted by the fact that their static sizes meant that they often could not effectively be alternately used across a range of differing-width, deep fryers.
Accordingly, there is a need for the development of a new and improved, deep fryer liner that can be interchangeably used with different-width deep fryers, and which would overcome the cooking sediment filtering difficulties of prior liners while providing better and more advantageous overall results in terms of extending the useful life of the cooking oils used in such deep frying processes.